Victory in Europe and Japan: 80th Anniversaries

Jim Dickson Excerpts

Thursday 13th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Stephanie Peacock]

The hon. Gentleman rightly outlines Scotland’s huge contribution. I am visiting Edinburgh next week, and I look forward to meeting my counterpart there. He is absolutely right that supporting our veterans today is incredibly important, and we work across Government on that. We are joined in the Gallery by Lord Coaker; we speak very regularly. This falls to not just DCMS and the MOD, but Departments across Government.

[Jim Dickson (Dartford) (Lab)]

Can I say how very welcome the Government’s announcement on the VE and VJ Day celebrations will be in Dartford? My constituency was very much on the frontline during world war two. The town and surrounding villages were a target for air raids by German bombers that could not reach central London, which often deposited their bomb loads on Dartford. Only today, part of Kirby Road and Hillhouse Road has had to be cordoned off due to a suspected unexploded world war two bomb. I pay tribute to the emergency services, which, even as we speak, are dealing with that situation. Many brave Dartford men and women fought and died in the war, and their memories are still strong. How can people use the VE and VJ Day celebrations to uncover wartime histories in their families?

[Stephanie Peacock]

My hon. Friend has outlined the huge impact that the war had. I said in my statement that my generation would be the last to grow up with family members and friends who fought or contributed; I remember on my first day at school, or certainly not long after I joined school, my first teacher talking about her experience during an air raid. That was really important to me growing up—it was part of my childhood that people talked about the second world war. That is not the case for today’s generation, which is why we have launched our “Letters to Loved Ones” initiative. That initiative encourages people to explore their family history—to look for letters and artefacts so that they can understand what life was like during wartime. We are encouraging people to share those letters and artefacts on our website, so that we can all learn from them.